![\"Reelsurfer\"](\"http:\/\/www.stoth.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/04e62_Reelsurfer.jpg\")
Reelsurfer<\/a>, which lets you search and extract relevant clips from long-form video, has just closed a deal with EduStream, the San Bernardino Community College District’s video portal, to make lectures and other video materials fully searchable by students and faculty.<\/p>\nEduStream is sponsored by the 110 California Community Colleges and their Chancellor’s office. They are working on deploying this fully across 170 institutions across 10 states included in Edustream and plan to launch fully in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cFaculty and students will be able to search and share segments inside videos using custom playlists and social network integration,” said Dr. Glen Kuck, EduStream’s Project Director.<\/p>\n
Announcement of the partnership comes while Menlo Park, Calif.-based Reelsurfer is in the midst of discussions to obtain video content from the major film studios. The company has also been working with the USC Film School since October of 2008.<\/p>\n
Reelsurfer’s technology encodes videos (converting it into the right format), indexes video files, and provides a search API. Users can create playlists of their selected content and download the clips as well as clip the content further to highlight an area of interest. The company is focusing on three market segments: content creators who want to enable raw footage searching, content owners who want to distribute content, and educational providers who want to give students access to content.<\/p>\n
Co-founders Neil Joglekar and Christian Yang came up with the idea while looking for their favorite one-liners from the TV series Entourage. They went to YouTube<\/a> first, but it wasn’t easy to find the exact clips they wanted, and clips were often tagged incorrectly. They created of a patent-pending technology that processes video and makes it searchable for 30 seconds of dialogue. They founded Reelsurfer in March 2008. The product uses a complex algorithm to figure out the most relevant clips for a particular search and ranks them based on factors such as synonyms and word proximity.<\/p>\n Because of video licensing and rights issues, the duo decided that a white label service made the most sense. “We are different from most video solutions in that ReelSurfer sits on top of whatever technology framework exists and allows video to be served without leaving a content owner’s protective walls,” said Joglekar.<\/p>\n The company, which works on a software-to-service annual licensing, is cash flow positive and has not received any outside funding. It just completed its first semester working with Brave New Films.<\/a> Visual Effects Society is another customer. Independent film producer Anand Chandrasekaran sits on Reelsurfer’s board of directors, and company advisors include Bill Fay (executive producer of Independence Day, The Hangover, and 300 and president of production at Legendary Pictures) and Carl Rosendahl (founder of PDI Animation, which was sold to DreamWorks).<\/p>\n Competitors include YouTube, Ramp<\/a> (formerly EveryZing), which allows for searching of audio, video, and text and has a partnership with NBC Universal across all of its online properties, and AnyClip<\/a>, which is focused on movie content and uses publicly available information and human tagging, as well as a number of university-based media centers. Joglekar said the combination of Reelsurfer’s technology and how it is deployed differentiates it from these other companies.<\/p>\n